It is known to provide a web server (“server”) on the Internet which can enable a web client (“client”) and the server to interact over the world wide web (WWW), in an environment commonly referred to as “Web services.” Web services are increasingly based on shared and open technology standards and protocols, such as SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration), and WSDL (Web Service Definition Language). Web services can communicate, interact, and integrate with heterogeneous applications, irrespective of their implementation formats to facilitate dynamic integration between businesses, suppliers, partners, and customers. A web Service, or the provision of a web service, may thus be composed of multiple interactions between modular applications or component services.
In particular, Web services use a generic approach to requesting and providing services so that, for example, the services can be provided without a user having direct knowledge of which service provider is responding to a request for service. In other words, the client may request service from a Web service provider without the user knowing which provider, or which one or set of components services, is actually used by the client. These may in effect be hidden from the user. Further, the Web services approach may allow for the addition of new services (along with the replacement or removal of existing services) in an opaque manner such that the user is unaware of changes in the Web services. The user of a web service may in may cases only be aware of the interface to that service, being unaware of the behind-the-scenes interactions, applications, component services, and sequence of events or capabilities being accessed in the web services distributed environment/system to provide a response to the client.
With the proliferation of Web services, there is an increased challenge to provide operational integrity and security given the open and distributed nature of such services. For example, many approaches along these lines may only highlight/detect/identify/comprehend operational or security issues after the problems have occurred, which may cause system instability, which may otherwise have been prevented or reduced if known in advance. Furthermore, these operational and/or security issues may be complicated in the Web services approach discussed above due to the multiple interactions between component services as well as addition and removal of new services, which can cause instabilities due to services operating according to different versions of the different protocols and languages discussed above. Accordingly, there is a need for further improvements related to the interoperation of services provided, for example, via the World Wide Web.